Never Recycle Your Schemes: Difference between revisions
→Anime & Manga
| (3 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown) | |||
Line 13:
== Anime & Manga ==
* ''[[Mazinger Z]]'': [[Big Bad]] Dr. Hell played straight it most of the time, coming up with a new [[Robeast]], weapon or device put Kouji or Mazinger Z through the wringer (Gromazen R9's acid blaster could melt Aphrodite A's armor, Kingdan X10 projected mirages, Holzon V3 set eathquakes off, Jinray S1 flew at Match 5, Aeros B2 could absorb Mazinger's attacks and hurling them back, Desma A1 caused hallucinations, Gumbina M5 was nearly impervious to all Mazinger's weapons...) and then he never again used it. However, sometimes he averted the trope, improving some old weapon or reusing formerly intended strategies.
* Orochimaru of ''[[Naruto]]'' had the ability to bring any dead person [[Back
** The scheme '''is''' eventually recycled on a mass scale later on and, true to the trope, is quickly figured out by the heroes, until the technique brings back multiple [[Physical God]]s from the dead and gives them improvements.
** To clarify, its used by his [[Bastard Understudy]] Kabuto for the puroposes of global war. Oro was crippled following that fight took several hundred chapters / episodes to recover, so he never really had the ''chance'' to use it again. It could also be a question of their different fighting styles- Oro used it mainly for psychological warfare, and he is ''more'' than willing and able to take on some of the toughest characters in the series man to man-, or that Oro is more [[Genre Savvy]] since most of these zombies are beaten by teamwork relatively easily (Oro used used them to overwhelm a single powerful opponent) and Kabuto is implied to overestimate how effective the jutsu actually is, especially since many of the zombies actually [[Explaining Your Power to the Enemy|tell their opponents how to beat them]] because they just don't like being controlled, or don't want to hurt their old teammates.
* While played straight for the most part in ''[[Samurai Pizza Cats]]'', one episode Big Cheese decided to build a giant killer robot that was an amalgam of every single one of the giant killer robots they used before. Not only did it look even more ridiculous than usual, but it was destroyed rather unceremoniously when Lucille panicked and unloaded her missile hairdo on it.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'':
** In the Death-T arc of the manga, Mokuba a good example of why it is ''not'' a good idea to recycle your schemes. He tries to defeat Yugi in Capsule Monsters with the same underhanded trick that didn't work the ''first'' time and only fails ''worse''.
** Inverted and downplayed in Battle City arc, Marik's duel against Mai, Marik tries to set up the same combo (Jam Defender plus Jam Breeding Machine) he used against Yami through Strings, likely to summon Ra. Doesn't work this time; Mai is able to tear the lock down with ease.
== Comic Books ==
Line 28 ⟶ 30:
* This is inverted in the Polish comic series ''Kajko i Kokosz''. The villain Hegemon likes to reuse a simple plan of capturing the heros' village: build a siege tower and use it to get his soldiers over the village wall. He also has the habit of setting fire to the tower after everyone else has climbed to the top so none of his men dare retreat. This means that he has to rebuild the tower every time he recycles the plan. The trope is played straight with the heroes who will use a different method every time they have to foil his plan.
* Invoked in ''[[Superman|Adventures of Superman #520]]'': on Christmas Eve, 100 criminals plot to commit acts of theft at midnight; rounding up the criminals strains the resources of the police, even with Superman's help. Supes and the Metropolis P.D. have to round up every single criminal in order to hammer home the message that this type of scheme doesn't work because if word got out of its success, criminals in other cities without a big name superhero could overwhelm the local police by copycatting the original 100.
* [[The Joker]]. Everything he does is for the sake of comedy - or to be specific, his sick opinion of what's funny - and seeing as a joke isn't as funny the second time you tell it, he never uses the same scheme twice.
== [[Film]] ==
Line 47 ⟶ 49:
* Lampshaded by the [[Big Bad]] in the first season of ''[[24]]'', when Ira Gaines points out he can still use Jack Bauer's daughter as leverage. Ironically, {{spoiler|Drazen would end up kidnapping Jack's daughter later on and using her in the same fashion}}.
{{quote|'''Andrei Drazen''': When Plan A fails you go to Plan B, not Plan A recycled.}}
* In the first season of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' The Master, angry that Buffy has been killing so many of his servants, sends a trio of vampire warriors to kill her. They almost do, but Angel shows up and they run away. When they return to report that Angel intervened, he [[You Have Failed Me...|has them killed]], and has Darla try to remove Angel as a factor. While this at least shows he's paying attention to what caused the plan to fail, it doesn't change the fact that even if Darla gets rid of Angel, he's just killed off the only vampires he's got who not only survived their encounter, but sent her running.
** He had them killed not for failing, but for cowardice. It doesn't matter how well your minions ''can'' fight if they ''won't'' fight, so the Master's not really subtracting anything from his available firepower that he hasn't already lost.
Line 70 ⟶ 72:
== Western Animation ==
* Plankton from ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]''. "I've used every plan from A to Y!" He then proceeds to use Plan Z.
* Averted in the [[Looney Tunes|Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons]]. Wily frequently reuses his plans, either in that short or in the following ones, to the point that most episodes start with a bowl of "Free Birdseed" in the middle of the road. If the Road Runner didn't stop for [[Schmuck Bait|suspiciously free birdseed]] ''every time'', most of the Coyote's schemes ''wouldn't even begin''. It's rather redundant since they never, ever succeed no matter what, and many of his failures aren't actually a result of any flaw in his plan or anything the Road Runner does—he just has ridiculously, all-but-supernatural bad luck and reality bending backwards for his prey (eg. catapults that break in impossible ways, or the Road Runner not being affected by ''gravity'' or able to run into ''paintings'') -- to the point where the ''real'' flaw in his plan is thinking that he stands a chance in the first place.
* Non-villainous, [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] example: in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode ''Today I Am A Clown'', Maggie has locked herself in the bathroom. The family try various ways to get her out including using a coat hanger. All attempts to open the door fail. The family is just about to try their zaniest scheme yet when Lisa announces she got Maggie out. Everyone asks how. Lisa replies, "I tried the coathanger again. I don't understand why we only try things once."
* ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' seemed to not only use each plan once, but would often consider the plan a failure if the ''funding stage'' failed. Brain then [[Lampshade Hanging|hangs a lampshade on this]] by spending one episode trying to find new methods when he thinks all his old plans amount to the same thing...
Line 76 ⟶ 78:
** Even worse Brain's plans often failed due to wildly improbable circumstances that had little or no chance of recurring.
*** Worse than that, many of Brain's plans ended during the financing or resource gathering phases. Brain never seems to imagine that he could simply postpone the plan and use a different resource-gathering method and abandons the plan as a failure before it even begins.
* In ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'', Zhao went to some trouble to get the Yu-Yan archers in his service for capturing Aang. The archers accomplish this easily, but we never see them used again. [[Avatar: The Abridged Series|The Abridged Series]], of course, didn't let this go without comment.
* Not only does Dr Claw of ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'' never use the same evil plan twice, he always hires a new specialist agent for each new plan (but uses the same generic mooks for everything else).
* In one episode of ''[[Gummi Bears]]'', Toady suggests to Duke Igthorn that they build another catapult to attack Castle Dunwin (as they did in the first story). Igthorn scornfully remarks that they tried that idea already.
Line 100 ⟶ 102:
[[Category:Contrived Stupidity Tropes]]
[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]
[[Category:
| |||